He smiled. Judah Cassidy, Miranda’s daddy, had snared himself a good cook, and he—and then his brother—had managed to keep her for almost twenty years. Plates of corn tortillas and flour sat round the table, as did a large bowl of refritos and another of rice. Smaller bowls of guacamole and salsa and cactus jelly filled in the cracks.

  Despite himself, Slocum licked his lips.

  Cassidy’s voice came from behind him. “She’s awful good, our Carmelita.”

  “I remember,” Slocum said, and grinned.

  Miranda poked her head in from the kitchen, looked at the floor, then up at Slocum. “Spurs?”

  He’d forgotten.

  He sat down in the nearest chair, which just happened to be at the dining room table, and removed them. “When you usually dine on the prairie,” he began, by way of apology, “you sort of lose track—”

  “Of the finer things.” Miranda cut in, grinning. “Like civilization and polished wood floors. I know. You’re forgiven. At least you didn’t wear your hat.”

  She didn’t know how close he’d come to it, but he just smiled at her.

  The meal was so good that Slocum didn’t take the time to talk. He just shoveled in that good Mexican cooking and occasionally asked for more lemonade, please. He’d noticed that Abel had planted a whole grove of lemon and lime trees out west of the house and that they were all heavy with spring fruit, so he wasn’t afraid of depleting the supply.

  When they were almost finished with the meal and Slocum was happily digging into his flan—which was served with extra caramel sauce—there came a knock at the front door. Miranda excused herself and answered it, and when Slocum saw who it was, he stopped eating.

  Bob Marcus.

  He stepped into the house, with Foley right behind him.

  Slocum stood up.

  They stared at Slocum first with surprise and then with bad intentions—and he stared back with worse—until Abel cheerily said, “I believe you fellers know each other!”

  Slocum let himself take a breath when Marcus and Foley relaxed. His hand never strayed far from his Colt, though.

  “Yeah,” Marcus said, with little enthusiasm, then turned toward Abel. “We got one’a your horse butcherers this morning.”

  “You don’t say!” Abel said. “Where? Did you catch him in the act?”

  “Not exactly. But he was on your land, and near the canyon,” Marcus said.

  “We got his horse, too,” added Foley smugly. “Served the horse-killin’ bastard right!”

  “Just thought you’d like to know, Mr. Cassidy,” added Marcus, who then shot a daggered glance at Slocum.

  “That was no horse killer, you idiots,” Slocum said, trying his best to keep his tone even, although the thing he wanted most in the world was to take these two outside and pummel them to death with an ax handle.

  “Huh?” said Foley, with his usual keen wit and quick intelligence.

  “You killed Dave Crone, you lunatics!” said Slocum. “Dave Crone. You remember Dave Crone, don’t you, Marcus?”

  Marcus had the good sense to appear puzzled. “Sure, but . . . why would Dave Crone be killin’ our horses?”

  Slocum was too angry to speak, but Abel quickly said, “I think you made a mistake, boys. Crone was on his way out to the ranch—with Slocum, here—to pay me a visit.”

  Miranda nodded sagely.

  Foley stared at his feet.

  Marcus growled, “Right sorry about that, Mr. Cassidy. He was pretty far off from us. But you can’t expect that we’d spy a man that close to the canyon and not think he was one’a the ones we’ve been lookin’ for!”

  “I suppose not,” Abel admitted. Slocum noticed, however, that at least Abel didn’t invite them to stay for a meal.

  Miranda ushered both men back outside, then returned to the table and shook out her napkin.

  “The plot thickens,” she said softly, smoothing her napkin in her lap.

  “Yes, it does,” growled Slocum, who was still grinding his teeth.

  “More flan, anybody?” asked Abel, helping himself.

  “That all it means to you, Abel?” Slocum asked, more sternly than he’d intended. “Two men confess in your parlor to a cold-blooded murder, and all you can think about is more flan? Hell! I’m surprised you didn’t ask ’em in to take lunch with us!”

  Waving a spoonful of the caramel custard before his face, Abel said, “Couldn’t see that it’d do anybody any good to start a gunfight in the house, Slocum. Things’ll get cleared up in time.”

  He slid the spoon and its contents into his mouth, chewed exactly twice, then swallowed. “All in good time.”

  Miranda nodded, although somewhat dubiously. “Whatever you say, Uncle Abel.”

  7

  Slocum discovered that he’d suddenly lost his appetite. He stood, grabbing his spurs from the corner of the table, and left the dining room. He went out onto the porch and rolled a smoke.

  He pulled a long, calming drag, forcing himself to keep a lid on his temper. Leaning one arm onto the porch railing, he contemplatively smoked the quirlie.

  A loose board creaked with Miranda’s tread, and her small hand brushed across the width of his shoulders. “Honey, he’s tryin’ to do what’s right.”

  “If he was, he’d be firin’ those two and movin’ ’em on down the road. We both know that. And if this is how he acts when one of his oldest friends gets shot, I sure don’t need him coverin’ my back.”

  “Now, Slocum . . .”

  He shoved off the porch railing. “Don’t.”

  Miranda had the good sense not to press him, for which he was thankful. He picked up his spurs and buckled them on.

  “I’m goin’ to take another ride around and see what I can shake loose. Cougar’s in a stall?”

  Miranda nodded, but didn’t follow him off the porch. “Just be careful, John.”

  He paused. The fact she’d used his given name was enough to bring him up short. She had to be really worried if she did that.

  He managed a smile.

  “Hey, honey, I’m always careful. That’s why I’m still alive.”

  Slocum made his way to the barn. Cougar was in a roomy box stall, contentedly munching his way through a bucket of ground corn and oats. “You got the five-star treatment, didn’t you, buddy?”

  Cougar didn’t bother to lift his nose from the feed bucket. Slocum walked down the long, wide aisle of the barn to the tack room. His saddle and blanket had been placed on a rack, the bridle draped over the seat. He picked up the saddle, the blanket, and a bristle brush and went back to Cougar.

  The Appaloosa still didn’t greet him. He was too busy licking the last grains of feed from the bottom of the bucket. Slocum started brushing the gelding, pulling the dust of the trail from the horse’s neck.

  As he swept the brush in long strokes over the gelding, dust rose and flew from Cougar’s broad back. Slocum brushed until a sheen glistened over the snowflake patterning on the gelding’s rump.

  He set the brush on the stall wall, placed the blanket on Cougar’s back, and smoothed it out. When he was satisfied it was flat, he lowered the saddle over the blanket.

  Cougar rolled his eyes and drew a deep breath.

  “Yeah, suck up the air . . .” Slocum pulled the cinch tight, and while he waited, he picked out the gelding’s hooves. After a while, Cougar had to release the breath he held, and Slocum took up the remaining slack in his girth.

  “No need to ever knee a horse, is there, buddy? Just gotta wait till nature takes its course.”

  He slipped the bridle up Cougar’s head, and the gelding took the bit. He led the horse from the stall and down the wide aisle.

  Outside the barn in the noonday sun, Slocum paused before swinging up. He lifted Cougar’s right front leg, bending it at the knee and raising it as high as it would go. He ran his hand along the girth, assuring himself the wide leather wasn’t pinching Cougar anywhere.

  He’d forgone this one procedure once and had a horse with a massive cinch burn that had laid the animal up for nearly a week while it healed. Ever since, he’d made sure the cinch didn’t pinch.

  As he swung up, he realized he was missing his hat. He dropped back to the ground and threw Cougar’s left rein around the hitching rail. Muttering to himself, he made his way to the house, down the hall to the room Miranda had put him in, and grabbed his hat off the corner post of the bed.

  Settling it onto his dark hair, he left the house, ignoring Abel’s calls of “Slocum, hey . . . Slocum!”

  Abel was not the person he wanted to talk to at the moment. If the man had even a lick of sense, he’d figure that out and let him cool off.

  Finally swinging up on Cougar, he turned the Appaloosa’s head to the east and kneed him into a slow, easy lope. As soon as the gelding settled into the rocking motion, Slocum felt some of the tension lifting from the back of his neck.

  Someone had once said that the outside of a horse was good for the inside of a man, and Slocum was not one to argue with that wisdom.

  The Bar C was a huge spread. He knew he couldn’t ride even a quarter of the fence-line in one day, but he had no intention of riding the perimeter of the ranch. He knew there was another way into that ravine where some of the dead horses were, and he wanted to have another gander at the place.

  He doubted he’d find anything that would shed more light onto this puzzle, but he wanted to rule out a few things, too.

  Before he had ridden halfway to the ravine, sweat was dripping down Slocum’s back and trailing down his face from his temples and nose. Not bothering to rein Cougar in, he pulled his hat off, wiped his brow and face with his shirtsleeve, and readjusted his hat.

  Cougar was sweating, but he wasn’t breathing hard, and the gelding wasn’t lathered, either. This pace was easy enough on him.

  At the back entrance to the ravine, Cougar slowed his own gait. His head came up and he snorted, shying back several steps and turning in a tight circle.

  If anything, the stench of carrion was stronger than it had been that morning.

  Slocum patted the gelding’s shoulder. “I know, buddy. Just stay calm, because I’m goin’ to ask you to go back there.”

  As if he understood every word, the gelding tossed his head in objection and spun again.

  “Hey, you know what, you’d make a right fine cuttin’ horse if you could do that with cattle,” Slocum assured the horse, guiding him through the spin and down into the ravine.

  Cougar’s ears flicked rapidly from front to back, as if he, too, was alert to any threat. He danced across the chert and sandstone floor, his head bobbing and ears flicking, his shoes clattering. At the far end of the ravine, Dave Crone’s gelding, stripped of its tack, lay with its legs straight out from its body.

  Slocum ground his teeth.

  “Those damn idiots.”

  Cougar tossed his head as if he agreed.

  When they emerged from the ravine, Slocum pulled Cougar to a stop. He scanned the ravine walls, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Whatever the horses were killed for wasn’t in this canyon.

  There were a few of those bizarre Indian etchings on the walls, but nothing that Slocum hadn’t seen a few hundred times in nameless canyons dotting the Arizona landscape. He’d often wondered if the etchings in the rocks had been the Indians’ way of putting up “wanted” posters, or a way to announce some major community event to everyone.

  That thought made him grin a little. “Yeah. Forget smoke signals . . . just check out the town paper . . . carved weekly on a canyon wall. ‘Heap big hunt next week. Raid white settlement tomorrow night.’ ”

  Cougar snorted.

  “You don’t think that’s funny?” Slocum started Cougar forward again. “Well, I don’t know a lot of horses who have a sense of humor, so you ain’t got room to talk, buddy.”

  He cut across the ranch, going back to the way he and Miranda had ridden in that morning. The sun beat down from the sky, pulsing white and blistering hot. Not even a lizard stirred in the heat of the afternoon.

  Slocum debated the smarts of being out in the desert in the heat of the day, but figured as long as Cougar wasn’t getting too hot, he could tough it out.

  He passed a large stand of saguaro. A woodpecker of some sort perched on the top of one, then wobbled its way down to a hole drilled into the cactus and vanished inside.

  High overhead, a hawk drifted lazily across the endless expanse. A moment later, the predator folded its wings and dropped like a bullet to the ground.

  Slocum watched as the big bay-wing rose a few moments later with empty talons. He grinned. Even the best of them sometimes missed.

  He couldn’t recall a time when a riverbed lined with cottonwoods had looked so inviting . . . other than that morning, he qualified. Cougar waded into the middle of the small stream. Slocum dropped the reins and let the horse drink.

  He looked around, noting the high walls, with stone carved into graceful curves and deep bowls by ages of running water. Cottonwoods lined the streambed and crept partially up the sides of the canyon. Their leaves filtered the blazing sun into a cool light, the color of buttered limes.

  It was better than sitting in church, Slocum decided, and probably a whole lot closer to the Almighty.

  And that brought him back to Dave Crone, who probably hadn’t had much of a service said over him. And a bunch of dead, butchered horses. And one hefty, shiny twenty-dollar gold piece.

  And Vance Jefferson.

  And, somehow . . . though he was damned if he knew how yet, they were all intertwined.

  Slocum swung off Cougar and walked slowly along the bank of the tiny, trickling creek, leading the Appaloosa. He hadn’t walked far when another glint of gold in the bottom of the streambed caught his eye.

  “What in the hell . . .”

  He bent and picked up another twenty-dollar gold piece. He shot a glance up and down the creek. There was no way on God’s green earth a wagon could have maneuvered its way along this riverbed. It was too narrow for one thing, and for another, it was way too uneven.

  The wagon would have broken its wheels, at the least . . . an axle was more like it.

  He flipped the coin into the air. The green-filtered sunlight caught on its edges, which glinted brightly. Slocum caught the coin in his palm, kneeling as he did.

  Now, one large twenty-dollar gold piece might have fallen from someone’s pocket . . . but two? Highly unlikely. Slocum slowly scanned the creek bed, then the canyon walls. Dead horses, dead men, hired guns, gold pieces . . .

  The dead horses were a diversion, plain and simple. Slocum was sure of that now. But a diversion from what? He rocked back onto his heels. Foley robbed stages and Marcus was probably involved with more than one stage robbery with Foley. Among other things.

  Where did Vance Jefferson fit into it, though? And, if the horses were a diversion, why had those jackasses killed Dave Crone and tried to kill Slocum, too? There was no way he and Crone could have learned anything over in the ravine where the dead horses were.

  Slocum ran his thumb along the rim of the gold piece. Crone had seemed mighty jumpy that morning, down in the ravine. Kept looking around him, as if he was expecting someone to start shooting.

  Slocum stood and swung up onto Cougar. He gently urged him into a slow walk, letting the horse pick his way across the slippery wet chert and sandstone.

  Slocum used the time to really study the canyon walls. And the whole way to the path where he and Miranda had entered the canyon, there was nothing he could say stood out in any way.

  Rather than turn out onto the narrow path, he continued along the canyon floor.

  Here, the cottonwoods grew thicker and the stream was a little deeper. The trees were also larger, older, and had grown more gargoylish in their effort to reach the sunlight.

  A few feet on and the trees seemed to have grown first to the ground and then to the sunlight. They were actually twisted completely around, gnarled and bent in their effort to grow upward.

  Cougar halted, swaying his head from side to side. Slocum sucked a long breath in, fighting nausea. Without any command, the Appaloosa backed up the stream and the nausea vanished.

  “Bad medicine in there,” Slocum muttered. “What the hell is that place?”

  Slocum gigged Cougar forward and the horse completely balked.

  Slocum huffed out a little sigh. “All right, old son. I can take the hint. We ain’t goin’ back in there.”

  He turned the horse around and went back the way they had come. He had passed the small path again when Cougar pulled up short.

  The horse stood as if frozen, his ears perked straight ahead. He raised his head and took a deep breath, then snorted and backed a step.

  Slocum also noted that not a bird chirped. When he had passed through a short while ago, birds had been jabbering to one another all through the shaded, cool canyon.

  This silence was unnerving. He slid a hand down to his gun and slipped it from the holster.

  “Come on, ol’ son, let’s go.”

  Cougar still balked, but now his ears were swiveling from side to side. Slocum looked slowly from one side to the other. He couldn’t see a damn thing other than cottonwoods.

  He lightly pressed the blunted rowels of his spurs into Cougar’s sides. “Git up, Cougar.”

  The Appaloosa took one step forward, and then backed several steps as fast as he could.

  “Dammit, you’re goin’ to make me lead you, ain’t you?”

  Slocum swung down and started walking. Actually, he felt a little more confident. While he didn’t want anything to happen to Cougar, at least the horse’s size alone offered him some protection if anyone was up on those walls looking to be shooting down into the canyon.

  He had reached the pool where he and Miranda had spent a very pleasant few hours, when Cougar came to a dead halt again. This time, the Appaloosa rose up off his front legs. Slocum was pulled off his feet, but he hung onto the reins.

  And now Slocum could smell what Cougar had smelled. The warm, metallic scent of fresh blood assaulted him. No wonder the horse wouldn’t go forward.